INSANE SUPERNOVA IS THE NEXT CELESTIAL ITEM ON THE MENU AFTER LAST WEEK’S ECLIPSE
The eclipse last week was certainly a sight to behold, with proper certified spectacles or comfortable welding goggles, of course. And this most recent eclipse gripped the world, with social media, regular media and a myriad of digital sources juicing up the crowd. I couldn’t help but note how there was already a sales pitch for the next one, in 20 years! But if that’s too much of a wait, there’s a much sooner to enjoy celestial event. But this one isn’t (fortunately) in our solar system at all. And that’s a godsend, as it’s a totally insane supernova.
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SUPERNOVA WILL HAPPEN ANY DAY NOW IN DISTANT STAR SYSTEM, T CORONAE BOREALIS
About every 80 years or thereabouts, there’s a supernova that happens in a distant constellation called Corona Borealis. For the star gazers among you, it sits between Hercules and Boötes in the night sky, relative to the Earth’s and our perspective. In this constellation is T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB, which is a binary star system made up of a red giant and a white dwarf. The supernova there is just one of only five in our galaxy that happen over and over again, or are recurring novae. And this particular one happens when the two stars get close to each other, with the red giant getting unstable and ejecting mass from its outer layers.
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T CORONAE BOREALIS HAS A SUPERNOVA ROUGHLY EVERY 80 YEARS, AND NASA SAYS IT’S SOON
But then the white dwarf collects that mass, and heats up enough to cause a runaway thermonuclear reaction. And that last is what creates the totally insane supernova that we can see from Earth, every 80 years or so. These novae (plural for nova) have happened most recently in 1866 and 1946. Now it’s not quite 80 years since the last. But NASA seems pretty sure that we’ll get another one this year, sometime between right now and September. Let’s hope it happens, and capture a little more imagination worldwide to fuel more space exploration (and adventures).
You can learn more about recurring novae by watching this video from the Houston Astronomical Society.
